Category: Action/Adventure

TRUE LIES

By Marc S. Sanders

James Cameron’s True Lies never had to be believable.  It only had to be fun, and it is fun for the first act and most of the third act.  Too bad the sitcom like, chauvinistic second act pretty much overthrows the whole picture.

When you watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger pic, you have to take it with a boulder of salt.  Throughout his career, he’s been pregnant (never saw Junior), he’s begged God to give him the strength to fight Satan (I’m being honest here. It happened in End Of Days), he’s been tossed out of a plane at thirty thousand feet with no parachute and lands safely in a dumpster (Eraser) and his twin brother has been Danny DeVito.  (Do I really need to share the title of that movie?) In True Lies, I have to accept the fact that the muscular body builder with an Austrian accent, and pretty good line delivery, convinces his wife and daughter, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku, that he’s simply a boring computer salesman.  It’s shocking, utterly shocking, to realize that he is actually a clandestine spy, and his family is completely unaware.  See if Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson were in this role, then I’d buy it.  Tom Arnold might have been a good pick, but James Cameron settled to make Roseanne’s ex-husband Schwarzenegger’s secondary partner with some comedy bits. He might be the best part of the movie.

A brilliant 007 inspired opening gets this adventure started off with a literal bang at a black-tie affair at a wintery German mansion. Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) infiltrates the party along with support from his partner Albert (Tom Arnold) who hides in a tech equipped van that’s close by.  Harry does the tango with Tia Carrere, which is charming and something new for the Terminator.  The outcome of this shoot ’em up episode puts these super spies on the trail of an Arab terrorist who has the capability of unleashing a nuclear arsenal on the United States.  When Harry is not chasing this guy on horseback and up high-rise elevators, with the equine in tow, he and Albert report to an eye patch played by Charlton Heston.  

Somehow, I sleepwalked into another movie, though.  Harry has not been the model family man and when he tries to make amends, he inadvertently hears his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) chatting with a sleezy car salesman (Bill Paxton).  Now all of the spy department’s resources change course to surveille Helen and this moron she’s been talking to because this is the episode with the misunderstanding.  James Cameron’s script makes very poor efforts to achieve sitcom level comedy.  A laugh track couldn’t even save this tripe.

Bill Paxton is a great actor, but he accepted a terrible, unfunny role as he ironically pretends to impress Helen by actual being a spy.  Ha!!!! Go figure!!!!

Jamie Lee Curtis is a great actor too, but she agreed to play one of the dumbest women to ever grace a screen.  She believes this moron’s lies as easily as she believes the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger is just a computer nerd.

One of the most intolerable scenes I can ever think of occurs after Harry learns what is really going on. He gladly continues to play one over on his neglected and unhappy wife by believing he’ll give her a fun adventure he thinks she deserves.  Helen is convinced that she must abide by the wishes of a clandestine government group who apprehends her.  She arrives at a dark hotel room with Harry sitting in the shadows, mere feet away, and convinces his wife to do a striptease dance in front of a stranger.  This routine goes on for the longest five minutes.  It’s not funny.  It’s not sexy.  It’s eerie and perverted with sick narrow mindedness. 

At the risk of getting political and prudish, Jamie Lee Curtis has always been one of the most outspoken celebrities for equal treatment between men and women and has ostracized those in positions of power who work towards their own self advantage.  Yet here she allows herself to be objectified by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a punchline for male chauvinistic pranks.  If this scene ended with Curtis breaking Schwarzenegger’s nose with a karate chop while holding him at gunpoint, then this becomes something else.  That’s a no, however.  Instead, she is a scantily clad victim of sexual deviants, and she never stands up for herself, or exudes any kind of pride.  I recall in 1994 not liking this sequence.  Over thirty years later, well after the tides of the Me-Too movement have passed, I still hate this material.  With all of the high-flying stunts and action thrown in to other parts of the movie, it is this scene that stays with me.

Once this stupid story detour is over with a cast of actors enhancing its inanity, do I sleepwalk my way back into the movie I was watching before.  Whattya know?  The Arab terrorist who has not been discussed for the last forty-five minutes, still exists. So, while being held captive, this becomes an opportune time for the unhappy couple to sort through their baggage.

True Lies starts out so fun and when the action is turned on, James Cameron and his team are offering some solid footage.  Helicopters, limos, and missiles fly over a bridge running from the Florida Keys.  Then it is ridiculous silliness with a fighter jet piloted by Schwarzenegger who uses the entire cache of weapons to wipe out the one bad guy while trying to rescue his daughter who his hanging from a crane high in the skies over Miami.  Some say the slapstick of The Three Stooges is a demonstration in violence.  I ask if those critics have seen True Lies because the mayhem is absolutely bonkers. 

I can’t endorse this movie because I think it is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films.  It’s also one of James Cameron’s most awful efforts.  The action is marvelously over the top, but the characters are reprehensibly idiotic and the film gets hijacked by a whole other storyline that is neither funny nor worth caring about.  There are so many better options to select from this writer/director, and this entire cast. 

With an absence of untruth, I am being forthright by declaring that True Lies belongs back within the scummy cauldron from it was stirred up from.

UNCOMMON VALOR

By Marc S. Sanders

In the decade following the Vietnam War a common denial (or ignorance, maybe) went towards American soldiers who were missing in action.  Many men were theorized to be prisoners of war long after the armed forces left the country, ending a losing battle with record numbers of casualties.  A handful of films of the 1980s brought focus to this topic, as a means for adventurous entertainment.  Chuck Norris had a series of Missing In Action films.  Even light action fare TV shows like The A-Team and Magnum PI brought attention to this issue.  Most predominantly, the possibilities of POWs were ingrained within Sylvester Stallone’s box office bonanza of Rambo pictures.  In 1982, Ted Kotcheff directed the initial entry of that series, First Blood, and he zeroed in much more precisely the following year, with Uncommon Valor.  

Gene Hackman is retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes who begins a decade long campaign convincing the U.S. government to seek out those who were left behind and are likely being held as prisoners of war.  His motivation stems from his belief that his son Frank is likely being held captive in a camp located in northern Laos.  

By the time 1983 arrives no action of recovery or rescue is taken.  The Colonel is committed to bearing the responsibility.  He appreciatively accepts financing of his own mission from an oil tycoon (Robert Stack) whose son might be with Frank.  The Colonel also recruits members of Frank’s unit who made it home (Fred Ward, Reb Brown, Randall “Tex” Cobb, Harold Sylvester, and Tim Thomerson). Patrick Swayze is a young guy named Scott who never served in the conflict but is an expert combat and weapons specialist who will get these men retrained for the upcoming rescue.  He also has his own reasons for partaking of this mission. 

Uncommon Valor is sporadic on humor and focused on the adventure and resourcefulness.  The first half provides footage of how the squad gets reacquainted with each other and the jungle elements they left behind in Vietnam.  They practice routines outlined by the Colonel with ground patrols, detonators, hand to hand combat, artillery, sabotage, and chopper rescue.  The second half follows them back into the Asian country where they have to obtain weapons and supplies, while making connections with locals who will escort them through the dense jungle area towards the camp.  

This is a rare occasion where Gene Hackman is not applying much of his acting craft. He is primarily going through motions of Kotcheff’s film direction with a script rumored to be co-written by Wings Hauser (also a producer on the film).  The trauma of the war is primarily carried by Fred Ward who struggles with PTSD long before it became so widely attributed to service men and women after returning from combat.  In First Blood, Stallone offered a much more substantial and convincing demonstration.  Yet, Ward does a serviceable job with a script that never goes terribly deep.

Uncommon Valor is better described as a present-day adventure picture.  It’s never boring.  There are fireball explosions and machine gun shootouts. The action set pieces still hold up with good art designs staged off the Hawaiian Islands in place of a sweltering Vietnam.  The prisoners who are recovered, supposedly held for over a decade, are chilling to look at with obvious malnourishment and dead-blank expressions.

Randall “Tex” Cobb and Reb Brown (the TV movie Captain America) are mostly doing wacky A-Team material here.  Gene Hackman, Fred Ward and Harold Sylvester are the straight characters.  

It’s not as grand as a Rambo film, but Uncommon Valor never lampoons or minimizes what was a horrifying experience for those enlisted soldiers who never came home, while their next of kin never obtained closure.  

For the 1980s, which feels like it had just passed yesterday, it’s fair to say that all those missing in action during that terrible and bloody war are no longer alive over fifty years later.  The opportunity to search and negotiate for their freedom has long expired by now.  While movies like Missing In Action, Rambo and Uncommon Valor focused on fictional triumphs that were never factually replicated, at least these films can serve as reminders for the sacrifices these people served at the behest of their country.  I’m not writing to ease lifelong pains.  All I can do is recognize, remind and be forever grateful.  These movies still serve a purpose beyond the pulpy Saturday afternoon adventures. 

EQUILIBRIUM

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s amazing what drugs can do to you.  Take them on a regular basis and perhaps you can maintain focus and discipline as an enforcer to a dystopian humanity.  Then again, if you stop taking the medication, maybe you’ll open your eyes wider with an ability to nurture, care and appreciate.

This is the set up to writer/director Kurt Wimmer’s futuristic sci fi tale, Equilibrium.  The immense action scenes look like a modified springboard off of what The Matrix provided.  Be that as it may, at least the story stands on its own with an Orwellian inspiration to give it legs. It actually looks like an elder stepbrother to that Apple Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott.

The best of a specialized police force is the Grammatron Cleric, John Preston (Christian Bale).  Within the bustling city of Libra, large monitors periodically remind commuters to take their routine Prozium.  This allows emotions and feelings to be suppressed.  Thus, order is upheld.  Jealously, for example, is ostracized from this community. The Clerics must heed to this program strictly as a means to live by example.  

Still, even with most of the world population wiped out, there are factions and individuals who do not abide by this governance.  Preston, along with large squads of heavily armed militia seek out these offenders and often discover their fix for stimulation coming from sources of art, literature, and music.  Apprehend the criminal(s), and destroy the contraband they conceal under floor boards and behind plastered walls.  The actual Mona Lisa becomes an early casualty of legal property possession. 

If the culprits take up arms, they’ll be no match for the Clerics, especially the best of this class, John Preston.  

Yet, what happens if John opts not to continue his dosage?

Equilibrium does very well at teaching this unfamiliar science fiction before exploring how it all crumbles.  The expository opening presents an exciting scene of Preston’s methods.  Later, it follows how the system malfunctions.  

Miguel warned me ahead of time because about the only thing I feign at seeing in a movie is any kind of harm to a dog.  A disturbing moment occurs as John experiences his “awakening,” and considering the value I have for a dog’s affection I cannot deny how necessary the moment plays here.  It lends to the change in the protagonist’s character arc.  It is a cruel scene but with anything that feels unjust, within reality or fiction, an event has to occur to pull our heads out of the sand.

The action scenes have a unique flair to them as the Clerics reveal firearms that dispense from under the uniformed sleeves ready to use for firing, but with a martial arts kind of gloss.  While you watch it’s just plain cool, and Christian Bale looks great doing the stoic, less is more exertion to the moments.  He’s such a good actor at performing choreographed dances of shoot ‘em up violence while struggling to maintain an uncompromising mentality this character is expected to be accustomed to.

On the other hand, his new partner, Brandt, is either drafted incorrectly in the script or miscast with Taye Diggs in the role.  He’s a Cleric in training and an admirer of Preston. If the Clerics are supposed to be devoid of emotion, then why is his envy of this man so apparent.  It’s Taye Diggs stepping off his familiar Broadway stage.  However, I do not believe that’s what Equilibrium is expected to offer.  Brandt seems to possess too much pleasure for his calling.  Ultimately, Brandt becomes the antagonist who serves the greater power as his suspicions grow about Preston’s “withdrawal.”  Taye Diggs and Brandt feel like they belong in another film.

Preston had a wife who disappeared mysteriously as well, and he’s left with two children who are being designed to perform like him.  I found the kids to be too much excess for Wimmer’s script though.  Yes, the son turns up at a crucial moment of discovery.  However, after the children appear early in the film, their father does not associate or see them again until close to when the story is wrapping up.  I’m certain the daughter had no more than one line of dialogue. I think it would have been better to excise this storyline altogether.  It has no urgency, nor is it fleshed out enough.  Why must John Preston be a father?  

Equilibrium is an interesting sci fi amalgamation of George Orwell and Phillip K Dick constructs.  There are some disturbingly decent ideas here and if you’re not careful you may find yourself comparing its designs to what some worldwide political climates feel like today.  Don’t overthink it though.  

It has some faults, but the action is entertaining.  Fortunately, Christian Bale occupies the whole of the piece.  The guy is just too dang cool, dressed in black garb with surprise weapons appearing from nowhere at his will while he twirls through the air with his arms outstretched and ready for fast moving combat.

Let’s see John Preston face off against Neo from The Matrix next.  My god, that’ll make the John Wick movies feel like nursery rhyme programs.

Think about all the artillery and jiu jitsu. 

I gotta lie down.  The headrush is making me feel like I overdosed on Prozium. There was a time when I got emotional over things, wasn’t there?

JAWS 2

By Marc S. Sanders

The last movie, the masterpiece of masterpieces, told us that a great white shark is rare for the kinds of waters that surround the New England area of Amity Island.  Well, Jaws 2 disproves that fictional theory as Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) ascertains that another man eater has arrived with a large appetite for chomping on swimmers, scuba divers and water skiers.  It’s ridiculous but it’s an entertaining sequel with a supporting cast of young actors ready to effectively tremble and scream while trying to survive the clutches of a hungry great white.  

Things appear tranquil yet prosperous for Amity.  A developer has completed a large Holiday Inn hotel that will magnify tourism profitability.  To Martin’s chagrin, his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) works for this guy.  Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) somehow got reelected following that terrifying Fourth of July weekend from a few years ago.  (Well…his kids were on that beach too.) Chief Brody’s biggest concern though is his oldest son Michael’s penchant to laze around sailing with his friends for the summer when he should be getting a job.  Michael just wants to score with the new girl in town.

All is well until an abandoned boat is discovered off shore with an underwater camera dropped on the ocean floor, near Captain Quint’s shipwrecked Orca.  Thereafter, is an explosive water skiing accident.  The most hideous eyesore must be the beached, partly devoured corpse of a humongous killer whale.  The bite sizes are enormous.  Chief Brody is getting terribly suspicious, but once again his intuition is being disregarded until the truth reveals its blood in the waters. 

Jaws 2 is effective suspense.  The teens are straight out of familiar slasher movies, but this film actually released ahead of Halloween and Friday The 13th fare.  Director Jeannot Szwarc captures good close ups of the whole cast and magnificent pace with a speeding fin that slices through the ocean surface.  These kids are mostly nameless but the director gives them good moments to put their greatest fears on.  When the sailboats capsize and the kids topple into the water, there’s a nervous tension all the way to the end of the picture.

It’s no secret that Scheider hated making this movie.  Universal contractually beheld him to it after he dropped out of Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.  Nonetheless, I like the direction the character takes with returning script writer Carl Gottlieb.  Brody’s job is in jeopardy and maybe his marriage, along with the paternal strife he gets in the way of his eldest boy.  Roy Scheider does fine with the material.  Perhaps his personal frustrations lent to the performance.

What doesn’t work is Bruce II – the shark.  To this day I’m still stricken with fear of the shark from Spielberg’s film, even after we finally get to see it.  It truly is a scary monster.  In Jaws 2 however, the animal looks like something you buy at a beach novelty store for your grandson to play with in a kiddie pool.  The texture of the shark never feels authentic particularly after it survives a fire.  I am not fond of how it swims or raises its head above water.  Even when a helicopter gets in its crosshairs, the shark looks small and literally mechanical, never seeming strong or powerful enough to kill, maim and destroy. The magic trick just appears entirely too transparent.  Fortunately, I bought into how this town’s worst fears eventually come true again.  The perception of Brody and the kids is the mightiest strength of the film.

A brief mention is given to Matt Hooper (famously played by Richard Dreyfus in the first picture).  That always left me curious with why Universal did not pursue a sequel based on his character instead of Brody.  It’s hard to swallow that another monster shark is terrorizing Amity again.  Wouldn’t it have more plausibility for the actual shark specialist to pursue another brutally unforgiving Carcharodon Carcharias elsewhere in the world?  I think a story moving in this direction could have opened a lot fresher possibility.

Regardless, Jaws 2 is a fun summertime escape with one of the most familiar taglines in cinematic history: “Just when thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

Only watch Jaws 3 & The Revenge when you’re ready to get your itch for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kick to commiserate with some friends on a Saturday night.  Save Jaws 2 for when you want more shark chum after having watched the classic original for the five thousandth time.    

F1

By Marc S. Sanders

Miguel and I are the two unpaid movie critics who find ways to entertain ourselves beyond the IMAX picture on the screen.  By now, I know when Nicole Kidman is arriving and I start her off by saying out loud “We come to this place…”. Mig turns his head down in sarcastic annoyance.  We applaud at the return of Jaws in theaters this August.  There’s a rhythm we chemically thrive on.

Thirty minutes after a series of trailers plus an unwanted Allstate commercial (Thanks a lot AMC), the film begins, and the personal hand gestures begin.  Excuse me a moment.  I must pause for a moment.  (a-hem!) 

GET YOUR MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTERS!!!  

Now, where were we?  

Oh yes…

During the running time of Brad Pitt’s racing movie, F1, there were animated fist pumps (“Yeah!  Alright!!”).  There was rhythmic poking in and out of my right index finger jamming into my left thumb and forefinger (“Brad is about to get it on with Kate, the staple romantic interest, played by Kerrie Condon”).  A palm up facing twirl of the wrist (“Of course.” “Naturally!”). There’s the muted gasp pat on Miguel’s arm (“Is it?” “Could it be?” “Don’t tell me!” “Brad is fully recovered and walking through the steam cloud to pilot his race car?” “Again?”  “For one last time?”).  F1 covers all the expected beats.  

Frankly, I am not aware of too many racing films.  Days Of Thunder with Tom Cruise, of course.  Ron Howard did an engaging piece called Rush.  Ford Vs Ferrari works better as a bio than just a racing movie.  Pixar has its series of cute films. Still, just like the new Jurassic World picture, and I’m sure the latest Superman iteration arriving later this week, F1 is all too familiar like any kind of sports movie or Top Gun on the track Jerry Bruckheimer pic.

Tom Cruise—I mean Brad Pitt—is legendary stock car racer Sonny Hayes, a middle aged, washed up and broke recovering gambler desperately invited by his friend and former teammate Gabriel (Javier Bardem) to rescue his racing team from going belly up and leaving him hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.  Gabriel already has a cocky, promising driver named Joshua enlisted. He is performed very well with a lot of appeal by Damson Idris.  However, the young man does not have focus yet and lives for his social media likes and attention.  It’s up to Sonny to make the Formula One racing squad look like a contender while reigning in Joshua who can’t let go of personal conceit and a jealous animosity.

Kerry Condon is the engineering designer of Sonny and Joshua’s racing vehicles.  With each race, Kate trouble shoots what needs improvement and what can advance the drivers’ rankings.  Too bad she can’t fully invest her expertise as F1 demands she flirts with Sonny.  (Cue my right index finger while Miguel is ready to brush it away.)

The most impressive moments from Joseph Kosinski’s (Top Gun: Maverick) film are the racing scenes.  You are seeing both Pitt and Idris tucked within the snug cockpits of these low to the ground speedster machines.  The editing is superbly matched with the roaring sound and a pulsing soundtrack from another Hans Zimmer masterpiece.  

My one issue is the final cuts of the various races lacked overhead shots.  I would have liked to have seen moments from above where I could follow when the race cars pull in and out of a pit stop for example and stay on pace with unnamed competitors.  Kosinski gives an overabundance of close-up shots of the actors in the cars but not as much outside of the vehicles.  It’s all very exciting though, and when a film opens with revving engines playing in tandem with Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, well you have me hooked.

F1 is like another exciting amusement park ride that you’ve experienced a hundred times before.  In between the races, while there are well drawn characters played by good actors, there’s ho hum filling material that keeps this speedy ride going about a half hour to forty-five minutes too long.  The guys have to argue.  They have to lose the race.  They each have to crash their cars.  They have to be tricked into getting along.  There also has to be a traitor among the ranks.  There has to be sequences of music overplaying a series of different races and the voiceover commentators chiming in with standard fare like “…and here comes Sonny Hayes from behind…” As well, Pitt and Condon have to get it on.  She has to tell him she doesn’t get romantically involved with racers before they hump each other’s brains out (Cue the index finger!).  

Sonny also has to be told he’s finished, before emerging from that humid, sunlit steam cloud where Joshua and the pit crew slowly raise their sunglasses and drop their jaws, upon his return. (Cue the muted gasp, followed by my twentieth fist pump.)

Look, F1 is entertaining.  It’s well made.  It’s got great action with impressive direction and an enthusiastic cast.  Still, I’m tired of this more of the same.  I alluded to my same feelings yesterday with Jurassic World: Rebirth.  It’s all the same flavor and these iterations are not daring enough to take big risks or surprises with what they offer.  Consider Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.  Those films were expected to play by the same beats and yet there were some shocks to come through.  Look at what happened with The Empire Strikes Back.  Anyone see those surprises when first encountered?  The stakes were always surprisingly high, and the heroes were getting personally affected, not just episodically, but permanently.  

Blockbusters need not be so cookie cutter all of the time, but that’s exactly what is happening.  I already know the outcome of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie.  It could not be more apparent and unimaginative.  

I watched Companion which just hit HBO MAX earlier this month and in ninety minutes, that bloody delicious film diverts in so many different directions with a bare minimum setting and a small cast.  It’s as bloody as most thriller movies we’ve seen but an applied script turns on its axis over and over again.

On an IMAX screen, F1 especially delivers. Yet, while I’m absorbing well staged cuts of movie made racing footage, my mind is turning into comatose mush and the only thing that keeps it electrified is to acknowledge the standard beats.  

Declaring “Gentlemen, START YOUR ENGINES!” will not hold my attention for 200 laps.

Do it with me now:

Fist pump!

Finger fuck!

Muted gasp!

The Of Course!

Now you know the drill! Hit the gas!!! Turn up the volume and let Robert Plant remind you that You need coolin’/Baby I’m not foolin’

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH

By Marc S. Sanders

You’ve seen this movie before.  You likely saw it when you saw the trailer.  

The Jurassic films spawned from Michael Crichton’s ingenious best-selling novel, Jurassic Park (my favorite book of all time), stampede on and on, going on thirty-two years now.  Here is the seventh installment.  Once again, reinvigorated with a new cast and a bankable headliner/former Marvel Avenger.  

All year long, just like the last five films, I’m asking myself again why any of these people are going back to these islands.  Well Rebirth lends as good an answer as any.  Somehow the DNA from three different prehistoric mutated mega beasts will lead to a cure for heart disease.

Reader, from the outset I recognized the familiar pattern.  I knew precisely who was going to survive and who was going to perish before the closing credits arrived.  I got a perfect score, by the way.  Likely, you will too and thus the suspense is very watered down in Jurassic World: Rebirth. Seven times on the merry go round, you should know by now which direction this ride is moving.

Nevertheless, I was hoping against hope that the cure for heart disease will make it for the eventual consumption of human civilization.  The vials of Dino-DNA are collected and stored in an airtight briefcase.  So, while the scant cast of people screams, runs, tip-toes, swims, climbs and falls all over this tropical island, located close to the equator, my eyes were fixated on this medical breakthrough.  

Where are your priorities people? On the kid and her toddler dinosaur friend named Delores?  Come on!!!!! There’s much more at stake here than that or Scarlett Johansson and two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. 

Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is new director in the franchise and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The visuals of his dinosaur adventure are marvelous if not as impressive as they used to be.  Just like David Koepp’s script shamefully admits, the world no longer cares about dinosaurs as much.  Much of Jurassic World: Rebirth feels like a retread of the same old stuff.  At best, the only inventions left to tackle is to mold new monsters that are of a Frankenstein product.  The animals look fiercer and meaner and toothier and bigger…like way, way bigger.

Edwards and Koepp put the creatures in the ocean and in nestled caverns that have not been depicted as much before.  The sequences are done well but still I felt as if I had seen this movie before.

Not much can be said about Johansson or Ali’s performances.  She’s a high priced, skilled mercenary.  He’s the charter boat captain.  The rest of the cast is just the rest of the cast which includes some ready-to-sacrifice nameless folks gifted with screams to edit within and about five or six lines (one guy is privileged to share his French fluency), a pair of teenagers, an adorable kid and the resident greedy industrialist.  You know who I’m talking about, right?

I’m amused by those who rank the Jurassic movies.  How can you decide what is best or worst anymore?  The blueprints are so identical and the Dino gobbles and Dino chases and Dino roars all blend together for me by now.  If it was a Jeopardy category to identify which movie any scene was from, I’d lose big time and wager little on the Daily Double.

Beyond the first film from Spielberg none of these films are as special to me.  Like Chinese food, I fill up and I go back for more but that’s it.

Still…

Go to the movies.  Keep the cinema alive.  See the new Jurassic World movie and have fun with this new iteration of people going to the restricted island where dinosaurs romp and play.  I enjoyed it even if I never felt overwhelmingly stimulated.  At the very least I enjoyed watching my wife clap when she learned that one character survived.  

Me? 

…and 3…2…1… of course!

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

By Marc S. Sanders

If it walks like James Bond, if it talks like James Bond, it is…STOP RIGHT THERE! 

Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again is not James Bond…at least not the James Bond that I know.

Why was this movie even made?

I know.  You don’t have to tell me. 

For the most part it was a legal blessing for a gentleman named Kevin McClory, a contributing writer to the film Thunderball.  McClory sued the Ian Fleming estate for the rights to such named properties as the villainous “Ernst Stavro Blofeld” and the organization he heralds known as “SPECTRE.”  Eventually, it came to be that none of the films could use these copyrighted terms going forward.  (Hence, why Roger Moore never uttered these names in any of his films.  He just dropped a wheelchair bound bald man down a smokestack.)  Anyway, the courts allowed McClory a second chance at his Thunderball creation by granting him the blessing to remake the film with certain moments and developments that upheld the structure of the story.  So, in 1983 a competing studio to United Artists called Warner Brothers greenlit the release of this new film and banked on Sean Connery’s return to the famed secret agent.

Frankly, the backstory is a much more tantalizing adventure than this misfire.

Never Say Never Again always eluded me.  I never had a desire to see it.  I regarded it like a generic brand.  I turn to the EON productions for my James Bond fix the same way I turn to Heinz ketchup, never, ever Hunts.  What I’d heard of this film and the scant moments I saw of Connery in the picture over the years made me question how necessary this movie ever was.  It’s like that Gus Van Sant shot for shot remake of Psycho.  Why do it?  Because you can?  Is that all you need?

So, Connery opted to return for a large salary and for the only time in history two James Bond films were released in the same year, 1983, when Moore’s Octopussy also made it to the big screen.  Connery’s picture is a direct remake of Thunderball. One of SPECTRE’s top agents Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) catches possession of two United States nuclear missiles and hides them in the Bahamas.   Bond is older now, reflective of Connery’s age at the time, and practically retired as he loses a bit of his step in a training simulation.  Soon, however, he is on the case and contends with a female henchman by the name of Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) while also womanizing Largo’s main squeeze Domino (Kim Basinger, in a very early role).  His primary gadget is an exploding fountain pen.

Other than Carera who was Golden Globe nominated for her role, I can’t say anyone is doing anything terribly wrong here.  It is simply that this reiteration seems altogether flat.  This film is certainly missing the exhilarating pace of director Irvin Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back.  Here, James Bond the hero just seems to walk and sit and stand in and out of frame.  A lifeless tango occurs midway between Connery and Basinger as an opportunity to share some confidential information.  I don’t care if 007 is adorned in his tuxedo next to a 1980s hair sprayed Kim Basinger, the tango is boring to watch.  It is a dance that goes nowhere or builds to anything. 

Games are updated as well.  We are not in the casino watching baccarat or poker anymore.  James Bond plays video games against Largo and the only threat is a shock on the joystick when a parlay is struck.  I can’t feel the zap that is supposed to happen, and Sean Connery is hardly displaying any anguish as Klaus Maria Brandauer smirks in triumph.  So, where’s the suspense here?  Sound effects from an Atari 2600 while the hero and villain sit at a table with joysticks doesn’t send this scene into astonishment. In 1983, in the movie theatre next door, Roger Moore is undoing a cheating Louis Jordan in backgammon while the muscle headed henchman crushes the dice into dust.  That’s much more frightening. 

A midway motorcycle moment with smoke and missile gadget tricks is fun but still not as escapist as most other Bond pursuits. Maybe it’s because 007 wears a dark helmet and thus hiding his charm.  It’s a lot more fun to see Connery or Moore give a wink and nod as the chase continues.  Here there is no reaction and no response to the environment of the Bahamas.  Couldn’t a banana tree topple over or something?  Maybe some coconuts?  Could a yacht or boat capsize?

I always remember the infamous shark scene in Thunderball as Bond gets trapped in a swimming pool with a couple of great whites.  That scene is now changed to an ocean floor shipwreck setting.  For the most part this works as Bond circumvents through the wreckage trapping one shark after another.  This is one of the film’s few improvements.

The big regret is that Klaus Maria Brandauer as the main villain Largo was not served a better product. He is gleefully good.  He’s at least trying as hard as he can. He has the evil grin and short fused temper, but he’s also sophisticated among his wealth. 

He’s certainly working much harder than Sean Connery who seems to just be going through the motions and hardly exerting himself.  The actor is much too relaxed in his role here.  It looks like he memorizes his few lines minutes before the camera starts shooting.  Then he says what needs to be said.  You can subconsciously visualize Connery walking back to his trailer take after take.  There are some decent one liners, but none of his delivery soars anymore.  I think Connery was out of the role far too long since his last turn in 1971 and he just didn’t pick up where he left off.  He’s never applying himself.  His wardrobe, from the tux to a camouflage uniform, or even his swimsuits do not seem to rest well on him.  The tailoring looks off.  He’s not wearing anything as well as he used to.  Not even his hair piece, which is far too thin and uncooperatively resting on his scalp, sits well.

Kim Basinger is the blond.  Nothing more needs to be said.  Rowan Atkinson debuted on the screen with some silly escapist humor but either he’s not on long enough or he’s there too much.  The part should have just been cut altogether.

You don’t forget Barbara Carrera but that’s not necessarily a compliment.  She’s working like a dastardly cartoon from the Adam West Batman TV show and Connery is hardly responding to her screaming or antics.  Funnily enough, the screenwriter is Lorenzo Semple Jr, writer of the Batman show and Flash Gordon, from 1980.  So, while the tongue is trying to touch the cheek it’s only reaching the roof of the mouth this time.  Carrera is a headache. She acts like a misbehaved child.  Somebody loved her though for that Golden Globe nomination.  How? Why?

Another bit of buyer’s remorse is the casting of Max Von Sydow as Blofeld.  Inspired casting.  Yet, why is he given nothing to do?  This is Max Von Sydow!!!!!  He’s been hired to watch a Sony monitor with his white cat tucked into his lap, but that’s it.  Between Brandauer and Sydow, these are some heavy hitters.  Plus, Connery, and a built-in storyline.  It should have all worked but it doesn’t.

The theme song is a painful earworm.  It is performed by Lani Hall, doing a Holiday Inn barfly lounge act that will never leave your consciousness.  You can practically see that wet, shiny lipstick slobber all over the microphone while she’s wearing a blingy sparkle dress and a red, leafy boa around her neck.

Never Say Never Again is a lifeless, uninteresting, tedious and sleep-inducing picture that no one but a Mr. Kevin McClory wanted. 

Like Jeff Goldblum would say ten years later, just because you could doesn’t mean you should.

FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA

By Marc S. Sanders

Her father gets killed.  She grows up to become a skilled assassin.  She seeks revenge.

There’s your story.

Ana de Armas headlines this extended branch off the John Wick franchise called Ballerina.  She plays Eve.  I like her.  The same way I liked her all too brief appearance in No Time To Die.  

Keanu Reeves’ Mr. Wick makes some scant appearances to escort Eve into the ring where she can use guns, lots and lots and lots of guns, plus a bunch of knives too. Kitchen utensils including stacks of dish ware along with pots and pans.  Grenades to tape inside an goon’s mouth.  There’s also a flame thrower and to counteract against another flame thrower, there’s a fire hose.  

Ballerina takes a break acknowledgment when a flat screen appears behind Eve to quickly show the channels change from the slapstick beatings by The Three Stooges and then over to a Looney Tunes short.  Get the idea?

If there’s a story, it’s not even a full one note.  Gabriel Byrne is the distinguished Chancellor who Eve has a target for.  Despite his armada of endless assassins that come from every corner of the screen, and maybe they leap off from Lilo & Stitch playing in the theater next door, The Chancellor demands that Eve’s controller known as The Director (Anjelica Huston) call off her underling’s agenda.  Clearly though, Eve is under no one’s control.

Ballerina is high stakes action, and you get what you pay for.  However, I’d also pay for the 64 oz porter house and my middle age body will plead with me to slow down my pace before my gastrointestinal system implodes.  Every morsel of this movie is great and terrifically assembled but man is it an overindulging two hours and four minutes of slashing, shooting, exploding, breaking, crunching, pounding, punching, elbowing, kneeing, kicking, choking and strangling.  You drown in the beefy mayhem.

This actioner plays like a combat video game.  Drawn out fight sequences happen in one setting.  Then, Eve traverses to another location and the violence resumes.  It amuses me how Eve will do a number on one bad guy and once he’s permanently put away, only then does the next guy enter.  Wash, rinse, repeat. Whoa!!!! Here’s the next guy and then the next and next thereafter.  No one thug walks in to interrupt a one-on-one fight until Eve’s current opponent is put down with a bullet to the head or a grenade in the mouth or a flame thrower scorching.

It’s fun.  Yes.  However, there is a character that Eve encounters played by Norman Reedus, and I told Miguel later that I could not recall what his final fate was when we last left him in the picture.  I truly forgot that he’s a proud dad to a nine-year-old girl.  I mean, I truly forgot there was a little girl who was seen earlier in the movie.  I don’t even recall Reedus’ pertinence to the film. My mind was so paralyzed of thought process with the action overdose, that the few minute details there are, have escaped my short-term memory. I must have been suffocating in the fast-moving edits of the fight choreography and ballistic weaponry at play.  

After the film ended and considering what I know was left off with last year’s John Wick 4, I inquired of Miguel to piece together when this movie took place.  He looked it up.  I pondered for a millisecond at best, before I finally concluded it makes no difference.  Finally, after the production expended every penny on the last stunt man extra, the movie stops and the credits roll. Time to escape to the peaceful tranquility of my home.

The settings for Ballerina are marvelous and truly worthy of an Art Design Oscar.  I loved running up and down staircases and through underground corridors with Eve leading the way.  A snowy, mountaintop village occupies all of the action in the second part of the film, beginning in the saloon/dining hall, then going upstairs, then out a window, or three, and all over.  Director Len Wiseman cuts in great close ups of Ana de Armas in intense black leather with her hair in a neat ponytail.  Keanu Reeves is granted his own well-placed shots too.  

Wiseman also gets overhead shots to see the twisted stone walkways and stairwells of this area and where they navigate towards.  There are cuts to what comes around the corner and what’s thrust through doorways and windows, or down from the ceilings and rooftops.  It’s maddening and precisely cut.  The editing is superb despite how overstimulating all of the action becomes.  Eventually, you want to say “Oy!  Enough already!”

The script for Ballerina can’t be more than five pages.  It’s short on dialogue and what stands out to me is after Eve has set the whole town on fire and dispatched about three-thousands of The Chancellor’s militia, does his top henchman approach him and request to “Give the order!”  Buddy, after all this, if you have to ask, then this must be your first rodeo.  The Chancellor clearly overpaid for your services.

Ballerina is the female equivalent of the John Wick franchise.  Ana de Armas stands where Keanu Reeves stood for four pictures thus far.  If you’ve seen his four entries in this series, then you’ve seen Ballerina.  

Is it entertaining? Yes.  Is it mind numbing? After fifteen minutes? Definitely!  Do the filmmakers serve the product that was promised? Absolutely!  However, how does that ginormous porter house steak feel when it’s still lodged in your gut two hours later, and on until sunrise?

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE THE FINAL RECKONING

By Marc S. Sanders

The blessing behind Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is that it opts not to follow the uninspired routine that was settled for with the previous entry, Dead Reckoning Part I.  With myself included, that film was poorly received overall (look for my review on this page). It performed way below box office expectations as well.  After its release, writer/director Chrisopher McQuarrie and producer/star Tom Cruise were in a quandary.  The hanging thread of a magical key/MacGuffin and the answer to destroying the omnipotent Entity were left unresolved.  A new film had to be made, despite an empty storyline.  Money had to be spent.  So, the guys needed to invest it wisely.  For the most part, the finances were used quite well as the pair learned what worked. More importantly they steered away from what didn’t.

What this movie improves upon is a hearkening back to some of the favorite elements of almost all of the prior films in the series, now on its eighth chapter.  Naturally, some citations cover what occurred in the last film to drive the continuous thin story of Final Reckoning. There are references made to the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot from the third picture, a favorite of mine.  Most notably, is the return of a long-lost character that no one would ever expect to turn up again. The best thing is that he truly serves the mission.  He’s not just a cameo blink and miss it.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire repeated that terrible grievance over and over.  The return of this particular guy actually makes you smile, laugh and cheer.  Yes, believe me when I tell you that marketing for Final Reckoning thankfully do not share every detail.  There’s more here than Tom Cruise running and running some more. 

Miguel and I took advantage of an IMAX presentation, and for two guys who normally favor Dolby, this action/adventure should only be seen on IMAX.  Probably the best film I’ve ever seen in this medium and I saw Dead Reckoning Part I this way, but that did not measure up to what’s offered this time.

Tom Cruise is absolutely nuts.  He’s over sixty and he’s doing some of the most daring stunts he’s ever accomplished.  The insurance bill to cover his safety must be at least half the budget to make the movie.  The famed biplane scenes that you likely caught in trailers, even on the marquee poster, is so much more impressive on IMAX.  You are seeing every limb of the actor’s body stretch to their breaking points to hang on to first a red plane and later a yellow plane.  Cruise’s facial muscles stretch against the G-force that is giving him resistance at ten thousand feet in the air.  McQuarrie makes sure to cover every inch of these flying machines from the cockpit to the wings and the tail rutters and the landing wheels underneath.  Cruise’s superspy, Ethan Hunt, has to climb all over these things as they go up and down and upside down and right side up on top of bursting into flames.  This scene is not even over in ten minutes.  It feels like a good twenty-five minutes and it looks like it’s no easy feat for Mr. Hunt.

Midway through the film finds Ethan Hunt deep sea diving to a shipwrecked submarine.  This sequence might rely more on set design, but I was convinced the entire time that Cruise was actually that deep below the surface of the water.  Memories of James Cameron’s The Abyss come to mind, but McQuarrie’s craft of this middle sequence within his three-hour film is so well edited and designed.  On IMAX you feel yourself submerged with the weight of the ocean above you.  The film will cut to the outside of the sub to show it drifting as Ethan Hunt shifts from one side of the interior to the other.  Whatever action the guy takes, the sub works against him leaving you wondering if the vessel is going to topple over an ocean floor cliff to even greater and unescapable depths. 

I will never like this movie as much as when I saw it in the IMAX screening.  It’s impossible to feel the same way on a large in-home flat screen.  This is a giant movie.

Grand set pieces with the sub or the planes had me thinking that Christopher McQuarrie should get a Best Director nomination.  I know it won’t happen but not everyone can accomplish what’s offered in Final Reckoning.  Could Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola?  I question that, because this is an altogether different kind of beast.

McQuarrie must have done a polish on the violations he committed with the last film.  The story remains to be nothing but a chase with countdown digital clocks and the urgency for all of these tasks to be accomplished by Ethan and his team at the exact same second (a repeat M:I staple), but the dialogue does not drive in literal circles of similar vocabulary this time.  Terms like “the key” and “the entity” are not so exhaustingly uttered over and over in this film.  Esai Morales, as the conniving Gabriel, is much more interesting.  In the last movie he was terribly boring.  No charm.  No anger.  No brattiness.  Here, he at least gleefully laughs at Ethan’s demise.  He’s still far from a great villain and totally forgettable, but at least he’s given something more to do than just stand menacingly behind Tom Cruise. Morales is not just donning a dark tan and a salt and pepper goatee. 

Most of Ethan Hunt’s team is given something to do, particularly Ving Rhames as Luther and Simon Pegg as Benji, always reliable.  Hayley Atwell was the best feature of the last movie and she’s great here too as the pickpocket, and now supposedly a quick learning kick ass superspy.  Kind of—No-VERY ridiculous but I stopped asking questions.  Atwell deserves a franchise series of her own.  She’s charming and lights up the screen.  Great actor too.

Pom Klementieff as the dangerous assassin Paris is now a good guy and other than speaking eloquent French she’s regrettably become a ho hum element.  There are other unnecessary characters including Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and those two guys who were chasing Ethan in the last movie.  One carries a stupid secret that’s more like an unwelcome surprise.  The other joins Ethan’s team to shoot a gun and look panicked. 

It will only frustrate you to follow when Ethan or Gabriel has the upper hand.  Christopher McQuarrie fleshes out his overly long three-hour picture playing games like that, and I stopped trying to pass his impossible SAT exam.  The attractions are a few of the characters who work with Ethan and the great feats of strength that the hero attempts to overcome. 

It is not the best in the series.  It is a huge improvement over the last picture, though.  What’s most significant is that Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is a gorgeous, mind blowing and breathless visual opus.

SEE IT ON THE IMAX before it self-destructs on your flat screen in five seconds.

THUNDERBOLTS*

By Marc S. Sanders

Thunderbolts* is the next Marvel movie out of the assembly line, the second of 2025 (after Captain America: Brave New World).  A new team is haphazardly assembled and the witty lines come through that poke fun at their idiosyncrasies and their origins.  Yelena (Florence Pugh) is the Russian assassin with a daredevil streak.  John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is the wannabe Captain America known formally as U.S. Agent.  There’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) who can teleport in and out of places, and Red Guardian (David Harbour), the Soviet equivalent of Captain America with a shaggy beard, a beer belly and an adorably estranged father/daughter relationship with Yelena.  Bucky, The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is back too.  We’ve talked enough about him though.

Marvel and Disney are advertising this cast as the anti-heroes, or anti-Avengers and the film lives up to that mantra.  However, it still has the witty banter of those other superhero team up pictures.  What sets this one apart though is that eventually the characters and the story use their brain and a little welcome psychosis for a thrilling final act that leaves you alarmed while welcoming you to empathize. 

The strongest actor and most dimensional character portrayal belongs to Florence Pugh.  No doubt that she carries the film as she leads us into an unexpected underground trap where the other members of this cast are all trying to kill each other at the assigned behest of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).  Yelena quickly figures out Valentina’s deceit while overlooking an innocent looking Frankenstein’s monster of a young man named Bob (Lewis Pullman).  The others are there to just exercise their skills for some cool action scene edits, and tag along with Yelena and Bob.  An escape out of the underground structure might overstay its welcome, but fortunately the characters are fun.

Once the escape is complete, the action gets better from there with explosions and fire power and such.  Cars and a limo go boom.  Bullets deflect everywhere.

Naturally, disaster eventually has to arrive in New York City and it is up to these Thunderbolts* to save the city.  Honestly, as the citizens kept on disappearing into blackness, I kept asking myself why Dr. Strange or Spider-Man didn’t show up.  That’s the become the unwelcome problem with the Marvel films and their ongoing connections to each other.  Why would I expect a teleporter and a group of acrobatic fighters who carry shields and handguns to stop a godlike entity that is destroying New York City?  Last I recall, Stephen Strange was not dead.  I had to look past the obvious though because there’s interesting material that harbors itself during this third act. 

Florence Pugh and Lewis Pullman steer the reins to triumph, and it is more so done with an underlying, bordering hokey message that these two capable actors balance quite well.  There’s punching and running and screaming and superpower stuff, yes.  However, the win works on an emotional level too, setting itself apart from the various Avengers movies.  There’s good editing to be found here as the characters jump from one room to another as personal demons are confronted.  The room jumps make you feel like you are in that inflatable wonder wheel you would walk on in the swimming pool. It certainly keeps you alert. All the while, Yelena, the skilled martial arts assassin, uses her brains and instinct to rescue her teammates and especially Bob.

The debate rages on the oversaturation of superhero movies and how they might be destroying cinema.  I’ve never been so quick to surrender to that argument.  The box office of these films keep jobs in place for a large multi-billion dollar industry and the profits to be made allow for small more arthouse like films to be produced.  Also, they are still so fun and entertaining if you allow yourself not to be such a film snob. So, stop complaining so much. 

As for the material of these pictures, Thunderbolts* is a good, up to date example of not simply relying on special effects and city destruction with another villain of the week.  It has a Ghostbusters/Men In Black humorous vibe to it while still catering to intrinsic insecurities and personal baggage that all of us carry through life.  Sometimes, when we want to escape to the movies, it helps to uncover someone telling a story that gets me, gets you…gets all of us.